Oakland’s new police chief, Floyd Mitchell, promises to bring ‘community policing’ focus

OAKLAND — Facing the public here for the first time, new police Chief Floyd Mitchell leaned away from the city’s tricky problems around crime and policing, instead focusing part of an introductory address Wednesday on his experiences growing up in Kansas City, Missouri.

He took care to note the three street intersections where he lived as a kid with a single mother and two older sisters, tracing an upbringing in a “large, diverse city” that he described as having “many of the same social...